Free World Hunger Essays On The Great

Author and Page information

This page: http://www.globalissues.org/issue/6/world-hunger-and-poverty.

To print all information (e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links), use the print version:

We often hear about people’s desire to solve world hunger, or to be able to feed the world and help alleviate the suffering associated with it.

However, meaningful long-term alleviation to hunger is rooted in the alleviation of poverty, as poverty leads to hunger. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty. If efforts are only directed at providing food, or improving food production or distribution, then the structural root causes that create hunger, poverty and dependency would still remain. And so while continuous effort, resources and energies are deployed to relieve hunger through these technical measures, the political causes require political solutions as well.

4 articles on “World Hunger and Poverty” and 3 related issues:

Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty

Last updated Sunday, October 03, 2010.

There are many inter-related issues causing hunger, which are related to economics and other factors that cause poverty. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc. This section introduces some of these issues.

Read “Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty” to learn more.

Solving World Hunger Means Solving World Poverty

Last updated Sunday, October 24, 2010.

Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place. Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive. To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.

Population and Feeding the World

Last updated Monday, July 09, 2001.

The food scarcity part of the argument in the population debate is an interesting one -- people are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it. Food may be scarce, but it is international trade, economic policies and the control of land that have lead to immense poverty and hunger and therefore less access to food, not food scarcity due to over population.

Read “Population and Feeding the World” to learn more.

Food and Agriculture Issues

Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.

Food and agriculture goes to the heart of our civilizations. Religions, cultures and even modern civilization have food and agriculture at their core. For an issue that goes to the heart of humanity it also has its ugly side.

This issue explores topics ranging from the global food crisis of 2008, to issues of food aid, world hunger, food dumping and wasteful agriculture such as growing tobacco, sugar, beef, and more.

Read “Food and Agriculture Issues” to learn more.

Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty

Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.

Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation and contribute to more hunger and poverty in the long term. Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe. Many poor nations are dependent on farming, and so such food amounts to food dumping. In the past few decades, more powerful nations have used this as a foreign policy tool for dominance rather than for real aid.

Read “Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty” to learn more.

Causes of Poverty

Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about their governments? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But deeper and more global causes of poverty are often less discussed.

Read “Causes of Poverty” to learn more.

World hunger related links for more information

Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.

Links to web sites and articles that discuss world hunger, the relationship between populations and hunger, of poverty and hunger, agricultural issues, land rights and so on.

Read “World hunger related links for more information” to learn more.

Share this

Bookmark or share this with others using some popular social bookmarking web sites:

Author and Page Information

by Anup Shah

Created: Sunday, September 24, 2000

Last Updated: Sunday, August 22, 2010

Back to top

World Hunger Essay

862 Words4 Pages

World hunger has been a constant problem throughout the ages. It is a problem that should be able to be solved easily, yet there are still 1.02 billion undernourished people worldwide. With the world population being 6.7 billion people, and the Earth producing more than enough food for this amount of people, why is it that there are hungry, malnourished people all around the globe?

Hunger is caused by many events, including the poverty trap, natural disasters, war, poor agricultural infrastructure, and over-exploitation of the environment. The poverty trap is the cycle of poverty that can begin from a limited diet and progress to birthing a baby that is malnourished. This causes the baby to have slower development and poor…show more content…

They do this by destroying local markets and seizing or destroying crops and animals, while contaminating wells and mining fields. This forces farmers to leave their lands and usually begins their cycle in the poverty trap. Poor agricultural infrastructure causes hunger because the lack of roads, warehouses, and irrigation causes higher transportation costs, a deficiency of storage facilities, and unreliable water supplies. To improve the agricultural infrastructure, however, it would cost a profuse amount of money, which would put the country in greater debt and result in less funding for essential systems, such as health care, which already has too little funding. Over-exploitation of the environment is caused by deforestation, over-cropping, poor farming practices, and overgrazing. When over-exploitation occurs, salination, erosion, and desertification results, causing less fertility and more hunger across the globe. Salination is caused by erosion that strips the earth of its nutrients, leaving behind salty, unfertile land. This causes plants to have less of a chance of growing properly, or not grow at all. When less plants grow, less people are fed, and more go hungry.

From 1970 to 1997, humanity was solving the starvation problem worldwide. The amount of hungry people had dropped from 959 million to 791 million, which is a total decrease of 168 million people. This decrease is